Search

TIME was, long ago, when Muslim commentators delved with tabloid nosiness into the public and private life of the Prophet Muhammad. Bukhari, considered the most authentic of the early collectors of the Prophet's sayings, revelled in the ins and outs of who slept with whom, when and where. When 'al-Hilal,' a small Jordanian weekly, published accounts, based on Bukhari, of the Prophet's sex-life, the result was shock and horror. This week, three of the paper's journalists were hauled, chained and caged, before a state security court and tried for defaming the messenger of God. An army general had earlier closed the paper down under a draconian decree, introduced after the September 11th attacks. This new sanctimoniousness, said officials, was a precaution to ward off a hue-and-cry from Jordan's Islamists, already restive over King Abdullah's hands-off approach to the looming war on Iraq. Instead, the government's action encouraged the Islamists. Within days of the banning, the main Islamist party, the Islamic Action Front, issued a hellfire fatwa denouncing the jailed journalists as apostates, even though one of them is a Christian.

The article discusses journalism and mass media in India. "Daily News & Analysis" is the third English-language newspaper launched in Mumbai so far this year. Add the prospect, nationwide, of no fewer than six new cable-television news channels by the end of 2005, and jobs are multiplying and salaries soaring. Competition between the new papers has been fierce already, for market share as well as for staff. India is a good place for journalists not just because new outlets for their work are proliferating, but also because the country is a mine of great news stories. Yet the news wars will not be free of casualties.

The article discusses why top universities in Britain are getting interested in journalism. Oxford University is planning to set up a journalism institute. The scheme is not an attempt to cash in on the popularity of "media studies", but a high-minded plan to use the university's clout to improve standards in British journalism. The idea has some heavyweights behind it--Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford professor and journalist, Tim Gardam, a former director of programmes at Channel Four and now principal of St Anne's college, the Reuters Foundation, an educational charity linked to the news agency, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the "Guardian," and John Lloyd, a senior journalist at the "Financial Times." All believe that there is a problem with the quality of British journalism. One issue is its silliness--the obsession with celebrity gossip and manufactured scandal that has spread from the popular papers to the qualities. Another issue is intrusion. Oxford is not the only institution interested in this issue. The London School of Economics is the best-known of several universities that are improving their media-studies programmes.

Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror, Britain's third-biggest tabloid daily, for nearly nine years, was not timid: indeed he was once described as having "more balls than brains". His downfall came over some photographs purportedly showing British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners. These turned out to be fakes. Morgan, who had doggedly insisted that the pictures were "accurate" despite a startling lack of supporting evidence, was fired by Sly Bailey, Trinity Mirror's chief executive, with such immediate effect that he left the building minus his jacket. The unusual twist to the story is the role played by Trinity Mirror's institutional investors, and particularly Tweedy Browne, an American fund well known for its remorseless pursuit of underperforming managers. It was one of a number of institutional shareholders to express concern at Morgan's near-suicidal defence of the photographs in the week leading up to his firing. Tweedy Browne insists it is not interested in politics, only in the reputation of the media outlets it owns, and especially the harm done by "inaccuracy". Although Bailey's cost-cutting had improved Trinity Mirror's fortunes, the Mirror papers' circulation was still falling fast--largely because its mainly male working-class readership is the most pro-war bit of the population. It was that which really got the owners worried.

Reports on the plans of former Los Angeles, California, Mayor Richard Riordan, popular among journalists, to put $5 million of his fortune towards starting a new weekly newspaper in Los Angeles, the 'L.A. Examiner.' Editors Ken Layne and Matt Welch, two experienced newspapermen who were pioneers in the online world of weblogs, have put together a colourful 52-page tabloid full of articles by an array of seasoned L.A. journalists and a few well-known outsiders, such as Billy Crystal. The aim, says Mr Layne, is to reflect the cultural energy of the city and, naturally, to cover local stories better than the existing media does. This is a reference to the 'Los Angeles Times,' the dominant local daily. Until October, 2002, Los Angeles had two free weekly "alternative" papers, the 'Los Angeles Weekly' and the 'New Times LA.'